Family’s fury as mum left at crash scene by police for 3 days dies
THE family of a woman left trapped in a crashed car for three days after police failed to respond to a call about the accident have expressed their fury after she died yesterday.
Lamara Bell, 25, had lain injured and without food or water beside the body of her dead boyfriend, John Yuill, 28, before she was rescued last Wednesday.
The mother- of-two was so dehydrated when she was found by a farmer that her kidneys were failing and she had to be put in a medically-induced coma.
Yesterday, her family revealed she had died after developing an infection, as they told of their outrage at failings by police.
They said the ‘huge error’ had been devastating for them and the family of Mr Yuill, who is thought to have died in the crash.
Just hours before revealing his sister’s death, Martin Bell said he and other relatives felt as if their ‘hearts had been ripped out’ by the police blunder. In an emotional outburst, he said he wanted officers to understand the ‘pain and hurt’ that had resulted from their failure to follow up a report about the accident.
Miss Bell’s father Andrew wrote on Facebook yesterday: ‘ My beautiful purplehaired girl passed away this morning.’
He described the turmoil caused by the accident in an emotional online post as he sat at his daughter’s bedside on Saturday. Describing how he felt like a coward for being unable to drive past the scene of the accident, he said he could not stop thinking about the ‘cars never stopping for her’.
Miss Bell’s father also told how he had unwittingly driven past the abandoned car as officers searched for his daughter and her boyfriend, who had moved in together in Falkirk, Scotland.
It was also revealed that the police failure to log and follow up a call from a passer-by who saw the couple’s Renault Clio at the bottom of an embankment by the M9 near Stirling could have been due to staff shortages. The call was have taken been by draftedan officerin to who work mayin the call-handling centre and allegedly did not know how to use the computer system.
He is thought to have taken a note of the call on Sunday, July 5, and passed it to a civilian worker who did not log it in the system.
Scotland’s police chief, Sir Stephen House, apologised to the victim’s families on Friday. Miss Bell, who has a nine-yearold daughter and a five-year-old son, and Mr Yuill – the father of two boys, had already been logged as missing by police after they failed to return from a camping trip. Police Scotland had issued photographs of the couple and their blue Clio. On Tuesday, officers had even appealed for sightings or information about their whereabouts. A review of police call handling in Scotland was announced yesterday by its Justice Secretary, Michael Matheson.
Despite suffering a number of broken bones and damaged kidneys, Miss Bell’s family was given hope last week when she was taken off a ventilator used to assist her breathing.
But she was rushed back to surgery and placed back on a ventilator on Friday when a build-up of fluid in her brain led to swelling. By Saturday night her brother revealed that the front section of Miss Bell’s brain was ‘shutting down’.
He said: ‘You can start down at her pinky toe and work your way up to her head and you will find a cut, bruise, graze or broken bone on every part of her body.’
Mr Yuill was pronounced dead at the scene and Miss Bell was airlifted to hospital to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, where she died.
Critics have warned that the police mistake was not isolated, and there could be others unless staff shortages were tackled.
A source said: ‘Voluntary redundancies have seen 1,500 staff lost. Police Scotland have got rid of people in call centres but are having difficulty recruiting others. Call-centre staff are under pressure and officers are being relied upon to work overtime. This is what is causing problems.’
‘My purple-haired girl passed away’